I Will Always Love You
by TackAttack
Summary: 'A soul mate is someone who you carry with you forever. It's the one person who knew you and accepted you and believed in you before anyone else did or when no one else would. And no matter what happens, you'll always love her. Nothing can ever change that.'


**I do not own PJO.**

* * *

She's the first to go.

He can slowly see her strength sapped away, her eyes losing their previous luster. Her hair hangs limp around her face, filthy and matted. Her cheekbones stand out as her flesh hollows away. Her clothes barely hang on her body, they're so ripped and too large for her emaciated frame. Her ankle gets worse and worse, turning an infected green and swelling to the size of a softball. She can barely stand.

It physically pains him, like a knife to the gut, to see her this way. He tries to help her, gives her everything he has for her to take, but it's not enough, and he knows this, but he denies it, because he can't imagine her not being there, just behind him, a hand on his shoulder, an arm wrapped around his waist.

They have no food, no water, nothing but the clothes on their backs, Riptide, and each other to hold onto.

It's taking a toll on him as well. His body shrinks, weakens. His joints protest with each movement, and his skin feels like thin weathered parchment. His tongue is a thick wad of swollen cotton in his mouth. It's painful to swallow, now, his throat so dry that it cracks, spilling blood, wet and heavy, down his throat.

Annabeth coughs up handfuls of blood.

On this level of Tartarus, there are no monsters, which you are infinitely grateful for. There is nothing to fight.

He rips his shirt into small rag pieces and soaks them in the dew like wetness on the walls, then lay them on his and Annabeth's tongues, which eagerly absorb any liquid they can get. While this keeps them alive, it does little else but remind him how much more he needs, sending alarm signals flashing through his head.

The constant heat and the incredible humidity make him feel like he's in a sauna. His body has no more water left to sweat.

The lack of food is like a black hole where his stomach should be.

Seeing as there is no way to tell the time, they fall together into a sort of daze, with no other though in their heads but to keep going forward.

They know, (especially him), that if they stop, they'll never start again.

So they keep trudging forward, until their muscles scream and twist in overuse, until they cannot move forward, cannot take another step. Then they get to their knees, wrap bits of cloth around their legs, and crawl, until their knees are slashed to ribbons and their knuckles are bleeding.

Then they walk again, and repeat. Tiredness overtakes their minds until they fall asleep moving, and collapse onto the unforgiving stone. Nothing but each other and the constant travel keeps them sane.

He wakes from a cycle, drags himself to his feet with sheer strength of tattered will, and reaches for Annabeth, who is clearly struggling. He manages to drag her to her feet, but she crumples with a rare cry of pain.

He crouches beside her, touches her face gently, forces the words out past his lips. "Annabeth. You have to get up."

She shakes her head. A single tear tracks down her face, and he catches it and touch the salty wetness to her lips.

"I can't." she says simply, her voice cracking almost beyond recognition.

His heart shatters into a thousand glass pieces.

She goes on, her face setting into a expression that he recognizes as stubbornness. "You have to-go on without me," she whispers. "To shut the Doors."

"No," he says fiercely. "I'm never leaving you."

She has no energy to argue. She merely shuts her eyes and falls into his arms. He manages to rearrange them into a slightly more comfortable position, propped against the wall. Annabeth rests on his stomach.

He can feel her breathing against your bare skin, getting slower and slower and slower. He holds her close to him, breathing in her warmth. He holds her for a long time, until she takes a deep, rattling breath, and then goes completely still in his arms.

A tear trickles down his cheek, but that's all the water his body can spare.

She goes cold and stiff and lifeless, and eventually he knows he needs to move on, but he can't help himself from never wanting to leave her, even though he knows she's not here anymore. His body shakes under the strain.

At least a day has passed before he can force himself to carefully lay her cold, stiff body on the warm, slippery rocks.

He finds himself staring at her, wishing he could give her the burial she deserves. But he can manage nothing but wrapping the shreds of his shirt over her body, arranging her body so that it almost looks like she's sleeping, fixing her hair has best he can with his clumsy male fingers, closing her eyelids over her vacant, glassy orbs. He kisses her one last time, soft and tender, and full of all the love they'll never get to share together.

When he finally turns away, his body is wracked with dry sobs that rip his throat into a million pieces.

Everything has lost meaning without Annabeth by his side. His hunger and thirst no longer bother him. Instead, he welcomes the pain. It means he's still human.

The only thing keeping him stumbling forward are his friends, Piper and Jason and Frank and Hazel, waiting for them (him, now) on the other side, depending on him. He can't let them down.

But it's nothing to do with the gods. In fact, his mind is murky with rage towards those beings that let Annabeth die.

* * *

He makes it.

They see him emerge from the red misty depths, looking like an absolute mess, and they rejoice. They embrace him, ever mindful of his injuries, and they look for the bright eyed Daughter of Athena to come stumbling out after him. They look for a happy ending, and they should know by now that when you're a demigod, there are no happy endings.

He shakes his head almost imperceptibly, and Piper looks at you, confused. "Where's-" And then realization hits her like a ton of bricks, and her face crumples, and she turns, buries her face into Jason's arms.

He holds her tight, and you have to turn away, remembering the rare smile and quick wit, the sharp eyes and bubbling laughter.

A tentative hand reaches for him, touches his shoulder, and he shrugs it off violently. They don't try to touch him after that. They pretty much leave him be, aside for the meals they deliver, and the occasional messages from Camp Half-Blood. He doesn't care what they do.

All he can see through the misty haze he's living in is sunshine hair and sharp gray eyes, deep tanned skin and bronze battle armor. He's surrounded by lemon soap, hot strawberries, and coffee, teasing, and bubbling laughter, quiet '_I love you's_ dancing round him.

He vaguely remembers stepping off the ship, taking a cab with Jason to the apartment building where his mom lives.

He's dropped off. They sit on the couch, and she strokes through his hair, and he buries himself in her body, pretending to be five again, when he went to school and the kids weren't being nice. His hot tears soak through her shirt, and his desperate, broken sobs fill the empty apartment. She cries too, he's pretty sure. They both fall asleep together in his bed sometime later.

Morning comes, and she makes blue pancakes. He can barely force yourself to eat them, and she looks worried, really worried, but she says nothing, even when a half hour later his stomach protests and he runs into the bathroom and spews the contents of his stomach into the toilet.

It's nice here. He feels safe, warm, loved, even though his body feels like a huge hole has been ripped out of his chest.

He doesn't have to deal with anyone else but himself and how to go about healing. Except maybe he doesn't want to heal, wants to feel the pain, every single second of every single day, because how else will he remember her? She can never be replaced, never will be, even though she would want him to, because that would be an insult to her memory. How else will he be able to carry her with him, and not forget her?

He stays at Sally's apartment for two weeks, and then demigod problems fold the fragile house of cards he's been living in.

He's needed to help write the treaty that will bring Greek and Roman wars to an end for good. He's needed to accept the gift that the gods are bestowing on them Seven. He's needed to take up the post (beside Jason), of negotiators between the camps. He's needed to speak at Annabeth's honorary funeral. But how can he do that when Sally has to remind him to change his clothes, brush his teeth, do the simplest things?

They pick him up, all the remaining Seven, with haunted eyes and many, many scars. He rests his head against the window and stares out at the passing landscape, absolutely numb.

They arrive. Everyone stares at them as they walk by, some in awe, most in sadness, at how broken they all are, but especially the dark haired son of Poseidon.

He opens his mouth to speak about Annabeth, but what can he say that will even come close to the fire that she was? He closes it again, and simply watches the silvery grey shroud swallowed by tongues of orangey-red.

He scribbles his name on the long piece of paper that details the treaty of the Greco-Roman contact from now on. Everyone watches him with sad eyes as he turns and walks away.

He travels to the Empire State Building with Thalia, who's shattered by Annabeth's death, (but she's still staying strong, which is more than he can say,) and Grover, who hasn't stopped crying since someone told him the news.

He watches the numbers flick past until the doors open and he steps out onto Mount Olympus. The majesty doesn't strike him anymore.

He walks through the doors of the throne room with more clarity than he's had since her death, an icy clarity, and an anger that coils deep in your stomach, fangs bared, poised to strike. He sees their faces, calm and serene, and it takes all of his willpower to keep himself in check, because it's their fault, they're the ones who sent them all on a suicide mission.

He stands there, and purposefully sends his mind elsewhere to avoid listening to the whole spiel about how they saved the world, and blah blah blah. Annabeth taught him how.

He accepts the gift, (he doesn't even know what it is,) and they leave.

The days fade into weeks fade into months. He isolates himself from everyone except his mother, and everything he knows. He won't use his powers. He lives in his old bedroom. He doesn't talk anymore. Sally is terrified, he can see it in her face, but he can't bring himself to care.

It's the grief that does him in.

His mother is with him when he dies. She looks into his face and watches the light fade, and she cries, and the tears fall onto his porcelain skin, marred with scars. But she understands, through her tears and her grief, understands that for him, death is better than life without her. They burn his shroud, silvery blue, and they write his name in the history books, and they remember the sunshine curls and the mop of black hair, and the good times and the bad times, but also the love that burned brighter than the sun, the love that even the gods could not break.

* * *

His judgment is relatively quick. Elysium, they pronounce almost immediately. Thomas Jefferson bangs his gavel and he floats there, surrounded by a posse of dead soldiers. He crosses the gates and they shut the doors behind him, to keep out unqualified spirits.

Luke is there, Beckendorf, Silena, Nico, all of his old friends. He greets them, hugs them, is genuinely happy to see them, but his heart yearns for only one person.

He's afraid to ask them. They pull him along, to a small house along the river. Then they leave him, with giggles and smiles that crack faces.

He's almost afraid to hope…and then there she is, in full glory, curls falling around her face, tanned, her eyes sparkling. She throws herself into his arms, and he holds her tight, and suddenly, finally, he is complete.

He muffles his tears into her hair, and when she demand to know if he's crying, he denies it. Her eyes are wet too.

_-fin-_


End file.
